The NASSP Taking the Initiative program was created to help principals and school leadership teams develop essential skills, such as the ability to give meaningful feedback, think creatively, function as a team member, gather resources, deal with resistance to change, and launch an initiative. This article describes the program's success in a…

Leadership for school change, this book contends, must be shared. Administrators, teachers, staff, parents, and community members must become more knowledgeable about the change process and more proficient at working through it. This book provides guidance and resources for school leadership teams and practitioners and students of change. The…

Over the past 20 years, the middle school has been a major innovative movement changing the face of intermediate education. While hard to define exactly, middle schools have different priorities and purposes than junior high schools. The former serve preadolescents (ages 10 to 14) through a balanced, comprehensive program. Middle school programs…

Compares the problems faced in public education to those of U.S. industry during the past two decades. Points out that today's educational enterprise requires greater cooperation, communication, and commitment. Calls for the formation of a new partnership among education, business, and community. In place of separate reforms, advocates a new…

Through participation in a Kettering Foundation project, the Lawrence North High School in suburban Indianapolis (Indiana) has successfully implemented a number of the management practices that apparently underlie the productivity of Japanese businesses. Led by the principal, the school has committed itself to four basic concepts from the Japanese…

This practicum is designed to assist central office personnel in evaluating the work environment for better coordination to accomplish work, plan for a change effort, and implement a participatory change initiative. The work setting involved a K-12 urban school district (193 schools) containing 431 central-office administrators and more than…

Describes how one middle school implemented shared decision making successfully. Presents questions that staff asked themselves, including how stakeholders' interests are represented, the type of communication network to use, changes in teachers' and principal's roles, keeping the focus on student learning, the type of staff developments needed,…